The Balkan countries still have warehouses with Soviet weapons, which can be bought cheaper than NATO weapons. However, some of these countries still refuse to supply these weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, as they keep them as their national stockpile to maintain their defense capabilities. This opinion was expressed by military expert Serhiy Kuzan in an exclusive commentary to UNN.
They do have them in their warehouses, but these weapons are kept by countries as their own national stockpile to preserve their defense capabilities
According to him, some Balkan countries also refuse to supply Ukraine with ammunition directly, due to their separate cooperation agreements with other partners.
"All of them are tied into a single European security system, and accordingly, it is necessary to make approvals and, of course, to finance this issue," the expert said.
Kuzan also commented on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's statement that the cost of artillery shells in the world has increased 5 times due to the full-scale war. The expert emphasized that there is an extremely large shortage of weapons on the global market, which also leads to a rise in price.
"This issue must be considered in several aspects. We are talking here about the production time, the complexity of this weapon and, of course, the availability of components - I mean from sophisticated electronics, such as microchips, to gunpowder. Since last year, there has been a global shortage of gunpowder on the world market, and this is an integral component of artillery shells. That's why the price increase is indeed happening - in different countries, the dynamics of the price increase is different. But on average, 5 times. From 3 to 8 for different positions," said Serhiy Kuzan.
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The vast majority of the Armed Forces of Ukraine's weapons before the full-scale invasion were, to varying degrees , Soviet inheritance. Therefore, the weapons themselves, spare parts and ammunition are produced mostly in the former Warsaw Pact states. Some of the states that have the ammunition Ukraine needs are hostile, such as Russia and Belarus. Ukraine received all possible assistance from other post-socialist countries that joined the EU (Poland, Czech Republic, etc.).
However, there remains a group of Balkan states that, despite the European integration processes in some of them and support for Ukraine, are still strongly influenced by the Russian Federation. In these states, friends of Russia are still in power and have a significant impact on the policies of their countries. In practice, this is manifested in the fact that despite their overwhelming support for Ukraine, they refuse to supply us with weapons and ammunition directly. Therefore, Ukraine is forced to purchase ammunition from these countries through a number of intermediaries.